Life's a Bitca and Then
by Queen Boadicea
Summary: Just a quiet conversation between former friends. Yeah, right.


Title: Life's a Bitca and Then…

Author: Queen Boadicea

Disclaimer: This belongs to Joss Whedon and the usual gang of idi…uh, geniuses

Feedback: Do your worst—it can't compare to my worst

Spoilers: Some vague ones for season five

The woman strode briskly into the hospital room, her high heels clicking on the clean floor. She looked uncertainly at the switches and then clicked a couple of them to the off position. "There. Don't want any pesky orderlies or nurses interrupting us because you get a coughing fit, do we? Not that it'd matter if they did. Anybody comes through that door before I've finished our little chat, I'll just kill them."

The figure on the bed didn't move. Only the eyes seemed alive, following the female as she plopped onto the hospital chair. "Man, it is utter chaos out there. All those tent cities littering the streets, ragged filthy people everywhere while demons try to chow down on them. It reminds me of those old days you used to babble on about when we were together. Remember? I can't tell you how boring it was hearing you whine on about the good old days."

She glanced at the still object in the bed with a quizzical expression, her head cocked on the side. "They say hearing is the last thing to go in coma victims. Not that you're in a coma, are you? I mean, that would be a blessing and you don't deserve blessings. Not after the way you treated me." Her tiny, well-lipsticked mouth twisted in an ugly moue. "You were a real bastard to me, you know that? Then we meet up again and you think you can waltz back into my life and continue treating me like dirt! Well, to hell with that!"

She kicked a shapely leg in irritation and flicked a glance at the figure again. "I thought you were really good for me. Still, after clawing your way out of your own grave, even used cat litter seems like an improvement. But most of the time I couldn't stand hearing you talk. I used to tune you out and think about shopping."

Her eyes got misty. "God, I miss the shopping. I know how all of the older demons rant on about how great it would be to pull the world into chaos. The folks at Wolfram & Hart—well, the old employees who got killed by that rock thingy people told me about—wanted the world in ruins. Or else they just wanted to topple the system so they could be on the top of it. I was never too clear on the details."

She pulled out a tiny metal file from her purse and began sawing at one manicured nail. The rasping noise filled the room and momentarily overpowered all the machines keeping the bedridden victim alive. "I like the world the way it is. Or the way it was. That's _one_ thing we agreed on, anyway. Boutiques, malls, lovely shops where you could just walk in and get everything you ever wanted—clothes, food, hats, shoes, handbags. I really miss all that." She sniffled slightly as if at a great tragedy and put the file away.

"I _so_ do not want demons in charge of taking care of business in the world. You think Fyarl demons, banshees and fish monsters know how to dress? Please. And most vamps get stuck in the fashion they were wearing when they died. A lot of them don't know Gucci from the Gap."

"On the plus side, it's kept all the do-gooders busy running back and forth across the country to save sick Slayers from demons trying to make them into little girl kibble. Honestly, I don't know what those higher powers were thinking, giving those super abilities to women. Like we don't have enough in our lives to deal with without having destiny with a capital 'D' shoved down our throats.

"I can think of other awful words that begin with D. Disorder. Doom. Defeat. Disaster. Destruction. Disease. Death. Which brings me to the subject at hand."

She smiled, a spiteful expression that flitted across her face, and leaned closer to the shrunken body on the bed. Illness and encroaching demise had caused the figure to shrivel into a mere vestige of its former glory. She gloated over the signs of physical deterioration before continuing her monologue.

"You thought you were such hot shit, didn't you? Strutting around that little hole of yours, swaggering and smacking me around, insisting it was all a part of typical foreplay and I might as well learn to like it. Well, maybe I did learn to like it a little. But you never asked me what _I_ wanted, what _I_ liked. It was always you, you, you, saying whatever you wanted, doing whatever you liked."

She huffed in rage and then forced herself to be calm. "After I kicked you to the curb, I got my self esteem back, though. I took off, saw something of the world, got little old me back. I even got a job!"

The blonde woman beamed at that last sentence. "Yeah, everything was really going great for me. And I was in good company, surrounded by other people just like me. I had respect, money, clothes, even a kind of family. I had a 401K plan!" Her face darkened as she recalled what had happened next. "Then _you_ had to show up and spoil everything."

The other person didn't speak. Speech and movement were no longer possible beyond the merest eye flicker. She gritted her teeth at the lack of response. For the first time, she almost wished for a remark, even a sarcastic comeback, to indicate that the other person was listening. But the eyes were open. That had to mean something, right?

"So once again I should go back to being your blowup sex toy just because you're feeling the itch? I think not. So I decided to do something about that. I looked up a vengeance demon."

Something seemed to flicker in the rheumy eyes on the bed and she grinned in triumph. "You're starting to get it, aren't you? I'll bet you are. You always did think of yourself as being so clever. Well, the first thing I wanted was to have you covered in boils, blisters, nasty, ugly physical defects that would make sure nobody would want to look at you again, much less touch you. Then I figured that wasn't quite bad enough. So I asked the demon what would be the best kind of torture."

She shifted on the chair. Really, these things were way too hard. Was that to make sure the healthy didn't linger in sick rooms and make themselves sick, too? Good thing that wasn't a worry for her any longer.

"She suggested the worst thing to do to you would be finding the thing you loved and taking it away from you. She said everybody, even the most depraved loser, has something they love. The demon said mental torture is so much worse than physical pain because you never really escape from it even when you're sleeping. I didn't believe it but she was the expert not me so what do I know?

"Then the demon told me something else, something totally weird. Sometimes the best revenge is giving people exactly what they ask for and seeing them hurt themselves with it. She said that most wishes in the hands of human beings were like loaded pistols in the hands of chimps." She paused for a second. "Then again, _I_ was the one making the wish, so…" Her eyes narrowed at the implications and she stared at the windows, thinking of the mayhem outside.

She shook off her misgivings and continued. "I remembered how you wanted to become human again. You were really jonesing to become a human person. What if I took that destiny away from you? Oops, there's the 'D' word again." She giggled, the high-pitched sound pinging off the still walls.

"So I asked her about that Shiny Shoe thing of yours and she said that was perfect. But instead of taking that destiny from you, I should give it to you instead. So I decided to run with it."

"Oh, you didn't change right away. That would have been suspicious and those boring superboobs would have started sniffing around, consulting their seers, to find out what was really going on. Instead, you did one big good deed and poof! You're a real boy!"

Blonde hair was flipped over her shoulder while she shifted on the unyielding seat again. "Oh, but there's a downside to being human, isn't there? You are definitely _not_ the sort who ages well. All at once, it was as if old age had jumped you from around a corner. Wrinkles, a potbelly, bad breath, stinkiness from that stuff you're always putting into your hair." She glanced at the shiny pate. "Not that there's much left of it."

Again, there was a shrill giggle and it almost seemed as if the bed bound figure flinched. "Then that super-flu hit. I heard on the news how doctors had been predicting it for years, that it was one of those pandemonium thingies that spring up every three decades or so. It's not an epidemic, like the Teutonic Plague that hit Europe. Were you around for that? I forget." There was a pause as if she expected an answer then she shrugged again.

"I don't like listening to depressing stuff like this. But it's everywhere; you can't get away from it. They say this isn't a big thing like the plague because mostly only a couple of millions could die. One hundred mil, tops. That still seems like an awfully big number to me but maybe not when you think of the size of the population. How many human beings are on the planet again?" She frowned and tapped her perfect teeth with the tip of one fingernail as she considered the question. "Almost makes me wish I'd paid attention in social studies class."

"So far the press says it's just local. Yeah, right, like hitting all the big cities like New York and Boston counts as local. The big stores closed up and I've had to do my ordering from catalogs. Catalogs! I mean, I know I can get the same stuff from them that I get in the stores. But it's just not the same as walking in a well-lighted shop, feeling the fabric, trying on the clothes to see if they fit, eating the salesclerk afterwards…"

She sniffled again. "And the orders take forever to arrive since UPS and Federal Express are short-staffed because of, you know, all the death. And because the garbage men got sick, there's trash piling up everywhere. It's not safe to step out of doors after dark, what with the piles of human waste everywhere. And I'm not talking about the bodies."

The woman let out an undignified snigger. "Anyhoo, word is this came from diseased chickens, frogs or some other farmyard animal in China and hit the U.S. like a freight train. Wham! Within days, people were dropping like flies; doctors scrambling to keep up with the rush and the cops were going into overdrive trying to fight looters and criminals. They say the flu has been known to wipe out entire islands. No wonder the demons are jumping with joy.

"Not you, though. Thanks to your brand spanking new humanity, you pick up a case of the flu bug and, all at once, it's not so great being mortal again."

She shook her head in mock sorrow. "Now look at you. It was really fun in the early days, watching you cough up all those yucky shades of snot, puking your guts out, sweating until your clothes were sticking to you." She halted and grimaced. "Then again not so much fun when you yakked up on my new Manolo Blahniks. Ew.

"But they let me see you every now and then. I pretended to be upset about your pain and they fell for it. Well, why not? Since we were once an item it wasn't too big a stretch to think I was crying over you."

She leaned on the bed, her ears pricked for the laboring breaths drawn through weakened lungs. "You look like crap on a stick, you know that? Back when you were a demon, you couldn't see yourself in a mirror. Not that you needed one, what with me around to tell you how great you were. If only you could see yourself now."

A look of artificial brightness lit up her face. "Oh wait. You can!" She fumbled in her purse and pulled out a large compact, the size an outspread hand, and opened it. She held it up over the still figure, making sure her body didn't block the light from the ceiling. "See? There you are. Pretty gross if you ask me."

The compact was held up for a few minutes as the blonde woman made sure the other person got an eyeful of the ravaged reflection staring back from the mirror. Then she snapped it shut and returned it to its place.

"They say this flu thingy will burn itself out eventually so all I have to do is sit back and wait for things to return to normal. Fortunately, I've got the time. Can't say the same for you, though."

One curvaceous leg crossed over the other and she smoothed out a non-existent wrinkle in her short dress. "Yep, it looks like it's the big bye-bye for you. I won't pretend to be sorry for you when you go. Don't worry; I'll go to the funeral. I always did look good in black. It's so slimming."

She glanced at her watch, an expensive Lucien Piccard that she'd fancied the moment she saw it on that woman's wrist. The lady had put up a surprising struggle when she'd attacked her; guess those society gals had some starch in them after all. The mortal woman had been too old to eat though so she'd settled for breaking her neck.

"Oh, it looks like my fifteen minutes are almost up. I know visitors are allowed to stay an hour but you were kinda boring before you went all silent treatment. Now a quarter hour of you is about all I can stand."

All at once a quiver went through the other and a gasp welled up from the overworked lungs. As she stared in puzzlement, the seizure grew more pronounced and, when the figure began to cough, her eyes widened in delight.

She peeled off the breathing mask and began hurriedly yanking out the breathing tube, paying no attention to the liquid gurgles that greeted this action. "Ooh, I've seen this before! This is always so great. It turns humans into walking Slushies!" As the figure began hacking up blood, the sanguine tide choking him with every breath, her features shifted into their demonic ridges. Fangs sprouted from her jaws and she leaned over the man, letting her tongue out to lap eagerly at the bubbling spume.

Harmony crooned, "You taste soooo _good_, Blondie Bear…"

Finis

_"Which Cousin Has the Cabin in Northern Vermont? We're Flu'd" – by Joshua M. Bernstein, New York Press, March 2-8, 2005 (excerpts)_

_"The world is now in the gravest possible danger of a pandemic," the World Health Organization's Shigeru Omi said…prophesizing a pestilence that may make the Black Plague look like a recreational club drug._

_In a healthy virus cycle, pandemics (diseases that affect at least 25 percent of the world's population) occur every 20 or 30 years. They wreak havoc, then burn out and disappear… Only there hasn't been a flu pandemic since 1968. That means a lot of kindling is waiting for a spark._

_Flu is an inefficient murderer, preying on the elderly and infirm. Death (occurring in 0.1 percent of cases) is caused by a lethal pneumonia, which plays sloppy seconds to the initial infection. But the 1918 to 1919 Spanish flu was a nasty sumbitch, killing patients at about a 2.5 percent clip: The virus, like the avian flu, caused uncontrollable hemorrhaging. Patients literally drowned on their frothy blood._

_Spanish flu flipped infection patterns: Instead of selecting gramps, the influenza had a taste for healthy adults. Ninety-nine percent of the people who succumbed were younger than 65. When the flu finished its rampage, nearly a fifth of the world's population had been infected. Upward of 40 million people died, including about 675,000 Americans._

_Such mortality tallies may soon seem trivial. If H5N1's pathogenic potential (i.e., how well it kills) proves to be half as effective as that of the Spanish and the virus mutates to efficiently spread between humans…we could enter an epidemiological apocalypse. World Health Organization officials predict, in an optimistic scenario, two to seven million people worldwide would die. The toll could reach 100 million._

_In other words, bye-bye Big Apple._


End file.
